Dollar Store Sneakers

Dollar Store Designs are back and I’ve got something a little different. I usually look for items in the dollar store that I can jazz up, paint, hack, or try to makeover into some really cool piece of home decor. This time I’m working with dollar store sneakers and a Sharpie and making some wearable “art”. And I do use that term “art” loosely. An artist I am not.

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Pretty cute. What do you think? If you have school-age kids or grandkids, I say buy a pair of $5 sneakers, a Sharpie paint pen, and let them get creative!

Here’s how I did it. First I bought a pair of sneakers for $5 at my local Dollar General. Do you call them sneakers or tennis shoes. I grew up in western Pennsylvania where we called them tennis shoes. But when I moved to Lancaster County, everyone here calls them sneakers. So it stuck. I lost most of my “Pittsburghese” after I moved. I no longer say “yinz”, pop (for soda), slippy (for slippery), but I might still say “crick” instead of creek ; )

Anyhow, back to the sneakers. At first I thought I’d use a stencil for the hearts. But after thinking about that for three seconds, I thought: I’m no artist but I can draw a heart shape for Peter’s sake!”. But I was worried about the placement of those hearts. If I freehanded them willy-nilly, the placement might be off. I was picturing a bunch of hearts smooshed together in one area, and then sparse in another.

Then I remembered seeing what my fellow blogger and friend Lauren from The Thinking Closet did in this post. That Lauren is so smart! So I proceeded to cut out a bunch (50 to be exact) of the little vinyl hearts using some scrap vinyl and my Cricut Maker. (If you don’t have a Cricut or Silhouette you can use stickers. And they don’t have to be hearts. They can be any shape. Just something to mark the placement of the drawn-on hearts.

Once my sneakers were randomly covered with orange hearts 😍, I grabbed my red Sharpie paint pen and got to work. It took about 2 minutes, if that. I just lifted off the vinyl hearts one at a time and then drew the heart shape with the paint pen where the sticker was. Notice that I didn’t completely fill each heart shape. I like the hand-drawn look. How about you?

These are too darn cute! I loved them from the minute I saw them. I need to start looking at other stores because our little one by the beach doesn’t have half the fun stuff like your tennis! Ha, we call them tennis too!

I have always looked for unique shoes like these online but I never even thought about making my own! These will definitely be my next project for this week! Thank you!Hannah recently posted…Mold Remediation Burlington NC

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